


This Son Of York

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family ties summon Malcolm home, but there's a small detour on the way to Leicester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated with thanks to Belen09 who first suggested a meeting between Leicester's finest and the citys recently-rediscovered royal guest, and encouraged me to write it. Well, it's Mr Keating's home town - it may as well be Mr Reed's too!

He stepped from his quarters giving the unfamiliar tight knot of his black tie a final reassuring tug, head raised and shoulders tensed against the urge to bolt back to safety before the door could shut. His civilian suit felt alien, uncomfortable as uniform never did, but it couldn’t be helped. The summons had stated _no uniforms permitted_ , and the issuer was a woman not lightly gainsaid.

He wanted to appreciate her instruction. Hers had been a naval family too, albeit one lacking the bemedalled admirals who peppered his paternal line. His sober number one Starfleet “parade” dress would have struck a discordant note against all the dark blue and gleaming gold braid of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy in full array. 

Still, it was a fact he could no longer avoid. He felt plain silly in the sombre formality of Civvie Street, and even on a melancholy occasion the recognition of that fact caused cold water to puddle, already frosting at the edges, deep inside.

_Pull yourself together, Reed! You’re an officer, for heaven’s sake!_

Therein, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed admitted, lay his problem. Presently that officer was dressed up as a mere man and without the homogenous layers of uniform and the small insignia of his rank to protect him he felt like a sorry excuse for one.

His shoulders hunched, exacerbating the looseness of a jacket hung unworn for so long it held the shape of the hanger not the man around the wearer. None of his formidable self-discipline could impel Enterprise’s armoury officer down the hall at the speed he knew was required: Captain Archer was doing a personal favour, and taking a personal risk, in holding the ship stationary over Leicester long enough to transport the local boy into town. The service started at 11:30 sharp and he’d be home before 14:00 – well before, if he had his way. A couple of hours to honour a kind and compassionate granny. He’d lasted longer in battle with Klingon combat troops before now. 

And, his recalcitrant mind screamed out, enjoyed it, too.

Lost in gloom he spied a loitering figure by the turbolift too late to swerve off-course and avoid it. “Hey, Malcolm,” Commander Trip Tucker murmured, unusually subdued in his greeting to mirror the Englishman’s mood. “Transporter’s standin’ by.”

“Sorry, I’m keeping people waiting, aren’t I?” The courtesy rang down the empty hall, its echo an accusation that at least relieved the pallor of his cheeks. A hand came down, comradely, to grip his arm

“It’s okay: and the offer still stands. If you want a little moral support down there…”

The warmth of the words, and the fingers still curled around his bicep, seeped through Reed to dissolve the icy core in his gut. “I’d rather not expose you to my family, Trip, but thank you.”

The fingers squeezed and held, just a moment too long. “Anytime. And don’t worry. You look just fine.”

“Feel a bloody fool.” 

“That’s my Malcolm.” Incongruously the Southerner grinned and in spite of himself Reed felt momentarily better, propelled into the lift with a lightened step. “Beer in my quarters tonight?”

“Sounds good.” Better than getting rat-arsed with half the former crew of HMS _Indomitable_ in honour of their old second lieutenant’s widow he added silently, hanging back to allow the senior officer to exit the capsule before him. 

His eyes widened, panic clawing his innards, at the sight of the whole senior staff lined up, solemn-faced and at strict _Attention_ , Captain Good Intentions standing at the transporter controls himself. “Whenever you’re ready, Malcolm,” Archer intoned in the grave half-murmur people always seem to adopt toward the recently bereaved. 

Suddenly, getting off the ship didn’t seem such a bad idea. With a smile he hoped looked genuine Reed hopped up onto the waiting pad and squared his shoulders. 

Bright blue eyes filled with concern snagged his. Briefly, irrationally, he longed to change his mind, knowing a word would have Trip bounding up to stand at his side. “At your convenience, sir,” he heard himself say instead.

There was barely time to close his eyes – standard practise during the procedure, whether warranted or not – before he felt the tingling begin in the air around him. Pressing his lips together, Malcolm sucked in a breath and waited for the universe to reappear.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brass hats. Never trust one with a menial's job!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a bit of a history geek. I suspect in the next few chapters that may show!

Nothingness. Eerily it was always the first sensation he had when the transporter beam loosed its grip. His eyes still tightly shut Reed ran a swift inventory of his molecules, tilting his dark head to the ruffling of a slight breeze. The rich, loamy scents of the countryside filled his nostrils.

_Countryside? Oh, bloody hell!_

Brass hats, he thought, opening his eyes to survey a vista of rolling country still shrouded in the damp, silvery mist of early morning where the sun struggled gamely to make herself seen. _Never trust a brass hat with the job of a menial. He’s bound to foul it up._

Harsh as it might be to class the harassed captain of a starship with the indolent desk-pilots of the higher administration the point, Malcolm was sure, was a fair one. The ensign on duty could have operated the controls quite easily and would probably have dropped him smack down opposite the Cathedral without muffing up the bloody co-ordinates. 

He fumbled for the communicator buried in an inside pocket, ambling toward a hedge line that indicated – perhaps – the proximity of a road which, in turn, would lead him to a village. Even the from the most remote extremities of Leicestershire it wouldn’t take long to find transport into the city; and by the dankness of the air he had ample time for a leisurely tour. _Must’ve got the clocks out of synch with Greenwich Mean Time, too. That’s what comes of leaving things to the Yanks, as Dad would say._

The stray thought stopped him dead in the middle of an empty field. “Good grief,” he said aloud, the words rolling with the opulent curve of the landscape around him. “I’m not turning into _him_ , am I?”

Shaken to the core by the gruesome prospect he abandoned the hunt for his communicator and struck up the slope, peering through the murk in the hope of spotting that most reassuring of landmarks, the parish church. Much of his childhood had been spent in Leicester: with her husband away at sea Mary Reed had retreated inland to her home town; borne both her children there; returned with them whenever boarding schools and naval postings would allow. Whatever part of the county he’d been accidentally dumped into Malcolm was certain he could find his way out of without recourse to the dubious assistance of a four-pip incompetent on the transporter controls.

He had almost made the shelter of the field boundary when a hoarse voice, ragged with a combination of early hour and moist air, stopped him dead in his tracks. “Stand fast! Not a step farther!”

_Oh, bloody hell!_

Aware of how unwelcoming a farmer could be to an intruder on his land Reed obeyed without hesitation, pulling both hands from his pockets to hang loosely, unthreatening, at his side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to trespass: I don’t suppose you know the way to the nearest village, by any chance?”

From the depths of the hedgerow a stocky figure in camouflage, all brown and green emerged scowling, the implement he brandished looking to Reed’s experienced eye less like an obsolete farm tool and much more like a serious mediaeval pike. Squinting as he raised both palms in the universal gesture of surrender, he checked the date on his smart civilian watch and the sinking sensation in his gut accelerated into a full-on plummet. _August the 22nd. Bloody Bosworth re-enactors! This one’s not half taking it seriously!_

Gramps being a devotee of military history annual visits to Naseby and Bosworth had been enshrined in the Parker family calendar, and being born a Reed was deemed insufficient excuse for avoidance. The young Malcolm had thrilled to the blare of trumpets and the thunder of hooves, captivated by the gaudy heraldic banners of the dragon and the boar, the white rose and the red, and the raucous cries of _“A Richard!”_ and _“A Tudor!”_ that rose and surged from the massed ranks in their leather jerkins and gleaming armour. 

Somehow he’d always assumed the participants ambled up with their fancy dress in bags half an hour before the main event. Even for a former Eagle Scout the idea of camping in unsuitable clothing on this windswept, often rainy, stretch of empty country seemed to go above and beyond duty’s call.

“Stop your mouth, traitor!” The sharp end of the pike jabbed dangerously close to his breastbone: with barely time to thank the diligence of his combat training Reed swayed out of harm’s way. “How many more in these fine French clothes come crawling from the traitor’s camp?”

“Oh, come _on!_ ” Under other circumstances the man’s immersion in his role might be amusing, but with his nerves already shredded and the prospect of three hours in his father’s company stretching ahead Malcolm was in no mood to accommodate a grown man’s historical fantasies. “Just point me toward the village and have done with – all right, no need to get nasty!”

Hot, foul breath poured over his face, the stink of unwashed flesh prickling his nostrils as his captor lunged and grabbed him close, the blood-lust of a Klingon flashing in deep-set onyx eyes. “I’ll point you to the nearest gibbet – aye, and the Tudor with you before the day’s out! The King’s commanded all spies be brought to him, but remember this face. You’ll see it in the crowd when you’re hanged like the whoreson you are!”

Given a shove in the back to propel him on his way Reed staggered, his formal shoes useless on wet grass but at least he could breathe easy, freed from the haze of noxious gas that enveloped his strutting jailer. Nearby he could smell the acrid tang of burning meat; in the swirling mist voices rang hollowly. Somewhere, close, were people.

But not, he realised a moment later, civilisation. 

Arrayed before him along a deep fold of ground was an armed camp. Banners flapped; figures moved like phantoms, distorted in the eerie light. Large tents stood removed from the melee, sinuous and elegant, rising on the higher ground beyond, havens above a morass of surly menace. None of the unkempt ruffians warming themselves around open fires where whole sides of sheep and cattle slowly charred regarded him with anything other than cold hostility.

No. _No!_

It wasn’t possible. 

Not even Jonathan Archer could have contrived to boot a man back 600 years into the past.

It had to be a re-enactment. It couldn’t possibly be…

As he was marched through the chaos his eye was drawn to a young man kept apart from the bustle of the camp, his fine silks and brocades grubby at the edges, dark eyes wide and wary, their gaze sliding past any that tried to connect. “No contact with the prisoner!” his captor snarled, close enough to his ear to make Malcolm start. “He’ll die alongside you should his old man play milksop to the virago he’s married.”

“That’s Lord Stanley’s son?” Details. Trivia. That was what he needed, corroborating evidence. The sentry obliged with a snort.

“Aye, no doubt the Tudor wants word of him – calls him _brother_ most likely. Well, he’ll have that death as well as treason on his conscience should the Beaufort bitch win the Stanleys from their right allegiance!”

The venomous declaration, spoken in a shout above the workaday commotion of men preparing for war, faded out. The language. It was odd, but not alien enough; the schoolboy effort of an enthusiast to ape ancient terminology rather than the jarring strangeness of medieval speech. _Of course it is. Ridiculous idea. Thrown back to 1485, my foot!_

He risked a smile toward the cowering prisoner, his sunburst of confidence pierced by the other man’s cringing response. From the knot of toughs on guard an elegantly dressed man with an immaculately trimmed beard broke clear, boring through the newcomers with a cold, slitted stare. “What’s this you bring me, watchman?”

“A spy, master: found him wandering the fields.” Immediately deference replaced swaggering self-assurance, as if Reed’s captor knew himself honoured to earn a glance from this man. Stealthily Malcolm extended thumb and forefinger into his inside pocket, ready to snag the communicator and call for rescue.

His nail scraped an unfamiliar bump on the base of the device and his vision blurred alarmingly. Tacked onto the standard communicator was an addition – Starfleet’s latest advance in personalised translation devices, as tested for the first time by the organisation’s finest at a conference on Telsis Two. He’d meant to remove it, he remembered. Then the call about Granny had come through and everything was forgotten in the rush to bring him home.

“You’ll have your reward, wretch!” His voice rising, querulous, the captain of the guard flicked out a hand with deceptive languor to connect with his subordinate’s ear. “Did not the King give his word? You, traitor! Lower your hands else have them cut off! Come with me – the King’s Grace will have questions for you.”

“I’ll bet.” With the best show of jaunty nonchalance he could muster Malcolm flashed a grin toward his fellow hostage. George Stanley, from whose stepmother Henry Tudor had his few precious drops of Lancastrian royal blood, managed a startled jerk of the head in reply.

It wasn’t possible. Everything pointed to it but his mind resisted the horrifying implication. Oblivious to the muddy ground that squelched beneath his feet Malcolm moved in a protective bubble of stunned disbelief, his surroundings blurred out; his sensed dulled. 

Bosworth. Six centuries from home.

No. 

It couldn’t be. 

He wouldn’t let it be.

Tightness seized his chest. His next breath froze in his lungs. Panic. He refused to succumb to panic!

Yet, as the flaps of the largest tent draw apart and the shadowy warmth beckoned from within, he could feel its icy tentacles envelop him.


	3. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm meets a monarch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Members of the Richard the Third Society, proceed at your own risk! I don't buy the "deformed monster" theory, but you may not like what follows....

For a moment he could only blink, struggling to adjust his vision to the murky interior where smouldering lanterns played over what counted, on the brink of battle, for royal splendour. In a far corner a low pallet bed was heaped with rich coverings, a dark fur thrown carelessly across the top. Disorientated, he could barely hold still when a single figure loomed out of the shadows on his right. “What’s this, captain?” a deep voice rolling with the fruity accent of Northern England enquired.

“A rebel and a spy, m’lord, taken by my sentry in the fields.” In his turn the commander of the guard became diffident, not daring to meet the piercing stare of a lean, stern man in plush dark clothes, the silver-gilt emblem of his master shining bright among the sombre folds. “The man’s asking for his reward…”

“Is the word of his king not enough, rogue?” Reed was spared less than a moment’s glance, dismissed out of hand as beneath a great man’s notice. A hand dipped to a pouch hanging from a jewelled belt. “Give the scoundrel this from me. Tell him he’ll have the remainder at my hand once the traitors are all hanged.”

“Yes, my Lord Lovell.”

“And search this villain for arms, you laggardly cur! Shame on you, bringing him to the King’s presence with his hands unbound!”

Lovell. The name rang bells, a half-forgotten piece of doggerel chasing through Reed’s head, dragging him bodily back to the schoolroom. 

_The Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our dog,  
Ruleth all England under a hog._

Well there was the hog, the bright pale boar of Richard the Third dangling from a jewelled collar; and carved into the shield-shaped silver ring Reed could see shining on the man’s middle finger was the shaggy head of a wolf. Francis, Viscount Lovell. No re-enactment could be this detailed. 

This was Bosworth, 1485. Catesby and Ratcliffe, no doubt, were out among their master’s troops. And the slight, almost delicate figure rising from its knees before a hanging crucifix could only be…

He hardly felt the groping hands around his waist; only belatedly recognised their owner’s lack of familiarity with the modern civilian suit that enabled his communicator to stay hidden, snug in its concealed pocket. The figure turned, a long robe of dark green velvet lined with sable whispering to its feet. For a silent moment the two men simply stared at each other.

A pale face: wary and thin, with sharp grooves cutting from the corners of the narrowed eyes; thick dark hair falling to the shoulder; a slightly arched nose set over a pronounced and pointed chin. 

Malcolm Reed knew his history. He knew his portraiture. The looming shadow on canvas behind the stranger, exaggerating an asymmetry of the shoulderline barely discernable beneath layers of luxuriant cloth, only confirmed his ghastly shock of recognition. 

“Bring the prisoner to me.” 

“But Sire, he might be…”

“You’ve seen I’m not armed.” That he dared speak for himself caused a faltering of step: a true Plantagenet, the man before whom even the proud Viscount Lovell cringed visibly, unaccustomed to an accused man not overwhelmed by the royal presence. Deliberately, keeping his movements slow and precise Reed squared his shoulders, sucked in a breath and stared straight down into the deep-set, shadowed eyes of the dynasty’s final king.

“Nor cowed, I see.” The voice was calm; even pleasant, and touched with the fullness of a Yorkshire boyhood. “Look your fill, villain! See your undoubted king!”

“That’s an odd choice of phrase when there’s another army at the bottom of the hill.” His voice rang clearly above the muted slap of canvas in the breeze but the words it formed shocked Reed as much as his audience, the battle raging through his brain overriding his inbuilt self-censorship mechanism. _Focus, Malcolm. Those swords are real._

The reminder did its job. In a remote corner of his head the shrill voice of panic still screamed, denying his situation and demanding escape even as his immediate surroundings were coming into sharp focus, the powers of observation honed by Starfleet’s training called to support a resolutely practical turn of mind. This man – King Richard – was an opponent. He knew how to best those.

And he’d faced far more intimidating figures than this lightly-built, worried-looking man, aged beyond his years, with thin-drawn dark brows and long, nervous fingers that worried incessantly at the single large sapphire on his right hand.

“An army of paid foreigners, traitors and thieves gathered for a bastard sprig of the royal line.” The dismissal sounded taut, even confident, but the lines around the eyes cut deeper as the King scowled, gnawing on his thin lower lip. “What claim has he, mere _Harry Tydder_ by blood or birth to match mine, undoubted son of York? Leave us!”

“But Sire, this man is your enemy…” 

“Alone, unarmed.... do you think me so feeble, Frank?”

The baron flinched, backing toward the exit while his subordinate simply bolted from the royal wrath. 

Incongruous as it was Reed felt himself transported back to Enterprise: to the armoury; and to the occasional un-officerlike moments of irrational temper that sent ensigns and crewmen scurrying in just the same way. Richard took a step forward, his heavy gown’s murmur breaching the uneasy silence that had fallen between them. “You deny that you’re come from the traitor’s camp?”

“Yes.”

The ring made another full circuit of the middle finger. “Then you’re sent by the Stanleys?”

“No.”

“By the widow Grey, the damned sorceress that’s conjured this alliance against me?”

Pure venom. For the first time the Plantagenet’s narrow features contorted and the vague, unsettling sense of familiarity – fellow-feeling, Reed amended - dissolved. “You’ve seen her, I suppose?”

“Not personally.” Unless one counted an icily lovely painted image viewed in a gallery, but it hardly seemed wise to say so. “And I believe most people call her the Queen Dowager.”

Prodding the lion with a stick. Potentially stupid, but a tactic approved by Starfleet Academy in one-on-one situations. Richard’s finely-drawn mouth curled into a snarl.

“My brother’s harlot, no more his lawful wife than was Shore’s. Would a wife – a _queen_ – consort with the enemies of her husband’s blood?”

“To preserve her own, she might” Malcolm objected. “You did have her brother executed before you were even crowned, and that’s not exactly the way to win a woman’s goodwill.”

“He was party to her plot against the old royal blood of the realm. Had I not acted both myself and my cousin Buckingham would have been murdered before reaching London!”

“Your cousin Buckingham who rebelled against you the same year?” 

“And you were of his party then, no doubt!” An especially violent twist almost brought the abused ring off the King’s finger. A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Ungrateful wretch! I gave him all the rewards that Ned refused; made him the greatest subject in England. What but witchcraft could turn such a friend against me?”

“Good judgement?” Malcolm suggested, forcing himself to keep his chin up under the hostile weight of the King’s gimlet stare. “When the rumours about the princes started up it might have seemed a good time for a rat to leap off the sinking ship.”

“Insolence!” The sibilant hiss of sword in scabbard wound its way through the furious cry. “For the sake of two bastards would a sane man lose his head?”

“There’s no actual _evidence_ your brother was precontracted; and even if he was, Eleanor Butler was dead before your nephews were born,” Malcolm pointed out reasonably. One hand flicked heavenward, dispersing the wisps of lantern smoke that drifted between them.

“And none against it, either! Ned was a lecherous dog: I’ll wager he promised wedlock a dozen times to have his way, but only the Woodville whore was conniving enough to keep him. There could be no peace in England while her faction held sway!”

“And there’s peace now?” He believed what he was saying, of that Reed was certain. Absolute power corrupting absolutely, as the old saying went. “Forgive me but there’s a rival army down there, the second in two years!”

“I trust God to judge the rightness of my cause!”

God. Long after this man’s violent death despots and democrats alike would continue to hide the gravest crimes behind that name. Malcolm bit his lip, fighting the urge to tell the man exactly where Divine justice would leave him by the end of the day and to Hell with Daniels’ 31st century niceties. 

“Your enemies are probably doing the same,” he said instead. “Especially as the deaths of two children are involved.”

Lightly, even casually made, the blunt accusation had sufficient force to rock the King bodily backward, what little colour that had been visible in his cheeks draining away. “You accuse us?” he growled, the crack of his knuckles evidence of a tightened grip of his sword hilt. Reed shrugged.

“Enough other people do. Their mother’s pinned her hopes on marrying their big sister to your rival; her whole faction’s gone over to Lancaster since they disappeared. The French Chancellor accused you in the Paris _Parlement_ last year….”

“Then you _are_ a Frenchman!”

“Only if they’ve occupied Leicester while I wasn’t looking!” Malcolm retorted petulantly. “But I can read, and I can judge circumstantial evidence as well as anybody. No one’s seen your nephews since the summer of 1483. If they’re alive, why not show them? You take the wind out of Henry Tudor’s sails; destroy the whole basis of the alliance against you. Yet you don’t do it. Why?”

The Plantagenet’s mouth worked furiously but barely a croak emerged. “There could never be security while they lived,” he grated. “The people loved Ned – they would not forget. The kingdom needs security, and have I not given it good governance?”

Reed stared at him, letting the truth hang heavily amid the candle smoke. “But it barely matters what good laws I pass; there’ll never be that,” Richard sighed, chin sagging down into his chest. “That woman, scheming with Stanley’s wife for their offspring – and he’ll betray me as lightly as the rest of them – the Tudor calling himself heir to _the martyred King Henry_ … There can never be peace for me, nor stability for England, while any of them live!”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Malcolm murmured, a small flutter of amusement quivering through his belly at the delicious irony of using Henry the Fourth’s Shakespearean lament to a later Plantagenet usurper. 

“Aye!” Suddenly animated, Richard lunged forward to seize his hands and Reed felt revulsion rocket up from where their fingers met, chilling him to the marrow. “Let the traitor aim for my place; he’d regret his fortune in winning it soon enough! Sentry! What’s the commotion?”


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm's tempted to interfere with history - in a very minor way.

Before a voice could be raised in reply the tent’s loose flaps surged inward on a gust of fury that hung, a miasma of stale sweat and bad temper, around a burly older man warmly wrapped in a dark fur-trimmed cloak. “Where’s this prisoner I hear’s been taken, my liege?” he bellowed, not sparing Reed a glance while making a perfunctory bow in Richard’s general direction. “Damned scoundrel should be hanged from the tallest tree in full sight of his friends!”

“There’ll be time enough once the battle’s decided, my lord of Norfolk,” Richard soothed while Malcolm turned a startled squawk into an unconvincing coughing fit. John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Half an hour ago that recognition would have stunned him.

Now, coming face to face with an irate fifteenth century aristocrat felt as commonplace as Chef’s breakfast grumbling. All that piqued his interest was the grubby scrap of paper clenched in Howard’s fleshy fist.

“The villain may answer for this before he dies!” Howard roared, thrusting his trophy upward into Richard’s face. To his credit the King didn’t flinch.

“ _Jocky of Norfolk, be not too bold,  
For Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold_,” he read, his voice tightening noticeably on every syllable. “Well, intruder, it seems you have an ally in my company! Forgive me – I didn’t ask your name.”

“There’s no reason you’d know it, Sire.” Several Scots kings had borne it hundreds of years before this man’s birth, but how common his given name might be in late mediaeval Leicestershire Reed was uncertain. The Duke of Norfolk snorted.

“He can die nameless for all I care, aye and all the other traitors with him! A fine-looking spy to infiltrate an enemy’s camp! Only a simpleton would think his foreign dress wouldn’t be noticed!”

“He was taken approaching us, my lord; he cannot be responsible for this – this foolish trifle.” With airy contempt Richard snapped the paper from his chief lieutenant’s grasp and let it float into the scented rushes protecting his finery from the mud, only the smallest twitch of a muscle in his jaw betraying anxiety. John Howard flicked a disdainful glance Reed’s way.

“Whether he is or not can be easily discovered,” he said, injecting a note of civility into the blatant threat. It took all Reed’s resolve not to shy away when the older man, fleshy and strong with a face that might have been handsome in youth, now sagging sadly at the jowls, loomed over him. The tip of Howard’s tongue emerged, flicking around full lips. “I’ll see him questioned and Your Highness need be troubled no longer.”

“With the pretender’s army in our sights we’ve more to concern us than one man’s mischief.” For the first time Malcolm heard definite concern in the Plantagenet’s voice as he drew his ally closer. “What word from Stanley?”

“None: but we’ve no need of that trimmer.” With all the bravura of a man committed, Howard dismissed the malingerers holding their force aloof, determined only to be on the winning side come nightfall. Dishonourable perhaps, Reed conceded, trying to shrink back into the shadows while the generals conversed, but did John Howard, the most notable adherent of King Richard’s cause, secretly wish for a foot in the other camp too?

Probably not. Within days of securing his own title the new king had granted plain Lord Howard the ducal coronet he had craved. _Loyaulte Me Lie_ , he remembered: Richard’s own motto, _Loyalty binds me_. Perhaps, in John Howard’s case, it did.

His gaze fell on the abandoned scrap of paper and before his brain could catch up with the action Reed’s hand stretched out to grasp it, the surface cool against his damp skin. 

Tiny shocks ran through his fingertips, static electricity firing into his brain while the paper fluttered back to the ground. _No. Leave it!_

Heat flooded him, a blessed counter to the chill of fear he could feel prickling the base of his spine. That couplet made the history books. It couldn’t be carried away to the twenty second century!

His sudden movement had caught the King’s eye and with a sharp slicing motion of the hand Richard silenced his crony’s mutterings. “You’d take a trophy to your masters would you?” he demanded, seizing the note and tucking it deep inside his padded jerkin – a necessary layer of protection, Reed assumed, beneath the gilded royal armour to be carried into battle. “Come: let us show you the hopelessness of your party’s position. Norfolk, bring this man!”

“Gladly, Sire.” 

None too gently the burly soldier seized his arm, hustling Reed out into the purposeful bustle of a camp being cleared for action. Again he was reminded of the organised chaos of Enterprise’s armoury, every crewman knowing their job, moving to it while the claxons sounded and the lights flashed red with the same quiet confidence. How many of these rugged, competent men would lie torn and bloody in the marshy ground by the end of the day?

The light haze had lifted and as he was urged to the crest of the hill Malcolm could distinguish clearly the bright banners fluttering over Henry Tudor’s distant camp: the red dragon of the pretender’s personal standard flapping idly, flanked by Lancaster’s red rose and the portcullis of the Beaufort clan. Figures in bright armour moved among the amorphous mass of dowdily-dressed men-at-arms, their heads occasionally turned to peer at their enemies on the high ground. 

“A paltry assembly, Sire.” Norfolk observed over the bray of an indignant stallion somewhere to his own army’s rear. “The Tudor’s peasant rabble will break and run at our first assault. You’ve not forgotten…”

“You’ll lead the first charge, my lord.” Amusement warmed Richard’s promise, deepening his accent and reminding Reed, absurdly, of his beloved best friend. The anxiety he had tamped down flared to fill his guts, roused by the fleeting memory. Home had never felt further away.

“Bring up the King’s banners!” At least Norfolk was enjoying himself, martial spirit stirred by the sight of the enemy below. His cry was echoed through the encampment and Malcolm watched in awe as the two giant standards were heaved erect on the hilltop, the white boar with head down and tusks bared in the shadow of the scarlet-blue-gold of the Royal Arms, England’s lions and the fleur-de-lis of that ancient, laughable claim to France. 

A stirring breeze nibbled the banner’s edge and as he stared Reed could see the colours bleeding one into another, the sharply stitched lions dissolving into shapeless splodges. Howard’s booming bass echoed, the sound seeming to emanate within his own skull.

He blinked. Nausea rose in his throat. Hazily, against the rushing sound of a hurricane gathering in his ears, Malcolm Reed felt himself fall into oblivion.


	5. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few things become clear.

He was tumbling, his legs as stiff and inflexible as a pair of rubber bands. He knew it, but he was powerless.

Something blue and blurred flashed across his restricted field of vision. Something warm and solid broke his fall and a voice, distant but blissfully familiar, rumbled against his ear. “Easy, Malcolm, it’s okay. I’ve gotcha, you’re okay, you hear me?”

Trip. Enterprise. Bright lights and the unmistakable, indefinable scent of home. “’m fine,” he mumbled, trying in vain to lock his recalcitrant knee joints before lumbering free of the engineer’s cloying grip. 

Somewhere deep in his fogged brain the scepticism of his friend’s response rang with the clarity of a church bell. “Like hell you are, Lieutenant! Phlox....”

“Everything seems quite normal, Commander.” The faint wheeze of Denobulan breath against his face and the gentle whirr of a medical scanner confirmed it and the panicky sensation that had been clawing his innards began to fade. Blinking, Malcolm tried to focus on the craggy face, more creased that ever with worry, of his commanding officer across the room. “It seems Lieutenant Reed is none the worse for his, ahem, small adventure.”

“Adventure?” he echoed. Jonathan Archer coughed.

“The transport was disrupted by an intense solar flare, Malcolm. You’ve been trapped in the beam for....”

“Eleven point four seconds, sir.” 

The rapid-fire intervention over his right shoulder made him wince but, ever the gentleman, Archer managed to acknowledge his eager subordinate. “Thank you, Mister Harper,” he said between gritted teeth. “You’ve just set a new record, Malcolm.”

“I’ll celebrate later, sir.” 

People snickered. “The disturbance seems to have cleared, if you’re willing to go again,” Archer continued over a small squeak of protest from the direction of a certain communications officer. “We can prep a shuttle, but you might not make it in time...”

“I’m fine Captain, honestly.” 

Nobody could express _Yeah right!_ without opening his mouth half so well as Charles Tucker the Third. “You look a little bug-eyed, Lieutenant,” he drawled, causing a small flurry of smothered giggles from the two junior officers huddled off left of the transporter. T’Pol arched an eyebrow at them and Ensigns Sato and Mayweather fell guiltily silent.

“Thanks for that, Commander.” His voice sounded steadier and as he stepped back onto the pad Reed even managed to conceal his sigh of relief at the sight of the Chief Engineer replacing the Captain at the controls. “Captain, according to the chronometer it’s eleven twenty-four....”

“Whenever you’re ready, Lieutenant,” Archer agreed, shuffling aside to give his friend more room to work. Tucker raised his eyes, locking onto the Englishman’s gaze.

For the first time ever when the machine began to hum Malcolm kept his eyes wide open, clinging on to that compassionate blue stare. When reality re-formed around him with a tingle of energy and the universally unmistakable buzz of _busy city_ he could have sworn it was still there.

“Malcolm!”

From the small knot of mourners gathered under the arch of the great west doors one broke free, a petite blonde in a well-cut skirt suit. “You don’t half cut it fine,” Madeleine Reed exclaimed, drawing censorious looks from their elders as she embraced her startled sibling. “Mum was starting to fret.”

“I wouldn’t let Granny down.” The instant he was released he had to readjust both jacket and tie. Maddie tutted extravagantly.

“Honestly, you’re as bad as Father,” she complained, steering him between a harassed couple and their two bickering offspring just as the mother gave vent to the querulous cry of many a late summer English day. _When do the holidays end, darling?_

“I don’t know what you mean,” Reed retorted indignantly, dipping his dark head in answer to his mother’s distracted wave. Maddie rolled her eyes.

“Of course you do, he’s been like a hen on hot coals ever since he got into civvies too,” she said dismissively. “And then of course – well, just _look_ at Aunt Cherie. You’d think it was a fancy dress competition, not her own mother’s funeral!”

“That’s a bit harsh, Mad.” The younger of the unmarried Parker sisters tottered toward the dean of the cathedral in all his finery, the full black veil that hung over her unseasonably warm woollen coat drifting with each step. “And at least she’s made an effort! Aunt Jane looks like she’s popping off to the shops!”

“She’s not attracting attention,” Madeleine countered, her pretty face freezing over at the sight of another mourner on a collision course with them. “Rats, here’s the head of _Community Services_ coming to offer his condolences _again_.”

“Last time I heard from Granny she was lamenting the fact she no longer had the strength to take him warmly by the throat when he _popped in to see if you need anything, Emma dear_ ,” Malcolm quoted wryly. In spite of herself, Maddie grinned.

“That’s the censored version; last time I visited she was regretting she couldn’t take off his tiny testicles with a pair of rusty shears. Oh, Councillor Morgan, how kind of you to wait! This is my brother, Malcolm.”

“Indeed, I saw your photograph in dear Emma’s sickroom whenever I called on the good lady.” A limp handshake accompanied the earnest words, leaving Malcolm with the highly improper urge to wipe his fingers against his trouser leg. “Such a _generous_ woman – always putting others first. We may not always have agreed politically, but one had to admire her tireless work for the community even after she retired from the council chamber.”

“Granny liked to be useful,” Reed answered vaguely, mentally booting his own backside for not accepting the kindest of friends’ offer. Trip would know how to answer that. The older man wagged his bald head.

“Oh, indeed, and so many organisations here to pay their respects: council members, charities, and the Royal Navy of course – your father’s a retired officer I understand?”

“Ah, yes, that’s right.” The sight of a large black hearse inching around the corner came as a relief, Malcolm suspected, to all concerned. With a last agitated mumble, Councillor Morgan bolted into the cool safety of the cathedral church.

“Come on, Malc.” As if she was afraid he might run away Madeleine seized her brother’s hand, guiding him to stand behind their parents and aunts as Emma Parker’s plain oak coffin was hefted onto the shoulders of six strapping naval cadets – a tribute, Reed gathered, arranged by his grandfather’s old commanding office. To the sonorous whine of an ancient organ the small family group bowed their heads, sucked in a collective breath and began the long, slow march past a watchful throng to the high altar.

He was shuffling sideways into his place in the second pew when he glimpsed it, the white marble softly reflecting the glow of the stained glass high above. The Royal Arms of England stood out in sharp relief beside the charging boar with tusks upraised in panels along the side. He had seen it before, yet never given it a second thought.  
The final resting place of a king. 

No, he corrected himself, standing on instinct when his neighbours did. _Of a man._


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talking over an experience is often a very good thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a reason I labelled this as a Tucker/Reed fic, honest!

“Well I’ll be damned.” Over the lip of the beer bottle he’d been holding against his mouth for the last ten minutes, Trip Tucker whistled noisily. “You tell Phlox about this?”

“Not bloody likely.” Malcolm took a first cooling swig from his drink, letting his head fall back while he savoured its richness against his dry throat. “I can do without the prolonged bout of cod psychoanalysis, thank you very much! _And why do you think your subconscious evolved that_ particular _scenario, Lieutenant?_ ”

His flawless impersonation of the doctor’s plummy tone raised a laugh but the amusement never reached Tucker’s expressive summer-sky eyes. “I was wonderin’ about that myself,” he admitted. Reed shrugged.

“May I?” he asked, just before he reached the e-reader lying abandoned on the floor. Trip grinned.

“Be my guest,” he invited expansively, shuffling himself back along the bunk until he was propped on a small mound of pillows, his free hand tucked behind ruffled blond locks and his knees drawn up like a small boy’s, giving his guest more space at the foot of the bed. Deftly, Malcolm summoned up a new title and presented it to his friend.

“ _The Car Park King_ ,” Trip read slowly. “ _The Life, Death and Strange Afterlife of Richard III_. I don’t get it.”

“Remember what I said last night when you asked why I’d missed the movie?”

“You’d been buried in a new book,” Trip replied promptly. His mouth fell comically open. “This one?”

“I was on edge about going home; I thought a good book might keep my mind occupied, calm me down before I turned in.” It was an old trick and it hadn’t let him down. Malcolm’s mouth twitched into a rueful half-smile. “I nodded off at silly-o’clock halfway through chapter four.”

A glance at the contents and the odd remark made sense. “ _The Eve of Battle_ ,” Tucker quoted wryly. “Looks like it made an impression!”

“Obviously.” Another long, slow sip of beer followed the laconic response and Reed leaned back until his shoulders connected with the bulkhead, letting his tired eyes drift shut. 

He could feel his friend’s eyes on him; sense the hesitation, the degree of uncharacteristic thought behind the eventual, inevitable, question. “So: what was he like?”

“Trip.” A trace of exasperation leaked into the name but Malcolm completely missed it, swamped as he was by a surge of affection for the man peeking from the far end of the bed. He shifted, swinging his legs up so he mirrored Tucker’s position, his hands linked around his knees. “He wasn’t _real._ He was Richard as I envisage him, nothing more.”

“That’s what interests me.” The engineer leaned forward, peering into his friend’s face as if he hoped to see through it to the innermost workings of his mind. Malcolm stuck out his tongue.

“If I’d wanted a psych assessment I’d have stayed in Sickbay!”

Without a word Tucker settled back against his pillows, loosely crossing his arms over his chest and stretching his long legs. “Oi!” Reed protested, shuffling awkwardly until he was perilously perched on the very edge of the mattress. Trip grinned.

“Gimme an answer and I’ll give you more room.”

“Brat.” Warm amusement rippled through him, far more intoxicating than the alcohol he’d been too preoccupied to consume. “He was quite normal, really. Nothing like Shakespeare’s monster.”

“Uh, Malcolm? Aren’t you the guy who told me Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian?”

The Englishman grimaced. “More than likely. But there was nothing villainous about him. He was a strong soldier and a good administrator: the kind of man who’d have made a bloody good medieval king if he’d ascended the throne naturally.”

“You still think he killed the princes?”

“More sure of it than ever.” Possibly, Reed conceded, because his subconscious had directed his shadow-king into admitting precisely that. “The thing is, Trip, he was actually very like me.”

“Bullshit.” 

“It was my hallucination!” The unexpected oath drew a reaction neither man expected: possessiveness. “And I daresay that explains it. There were moments I felt something – a kinship, if you like. He snapped, and subordinates scattered in all directions. I do that, don’t I?”

“You’re human, Malcolm. Give yourself a break.”

“He had the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

“That’s prob’ly what you get when you grab yourself a throne.”

“He was lonely.”

“You’re not.” Cautiously Trip eased himself around until they were side by side and stretched out a hand, feathering it the length of the smaller man’s arm. “Or you don’t have to be.”

“I know.” Eyes the Southerner had once thought emotionless lifted, dazzling him with the colours of the dozen differing emotions that danced through their depths for a brief moment before dropping away. “I suppose in a funny way I’ve always rather identified with him – the _ill-favoured son_ , to bugger about with the Bard.”

A small, indignant squawk ruffled his hair and, puzzled, Reed glanced up. Trip wagged a finger.

“I’m not havin’ that, there’s nothin’ ill-favoured about you and don’t you forget it!” he exclaimed, getting redder in the face with every quick-fire word. Feeling the heat spreading up from the base of his own throat, Malcolm could only gape. “I – oh, dammit! Those were the longest eleven point four seconds of my life, knowin’ you were stuck in that goddamn machine and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it! All I could think of was that I’d never even told you…”

As if a cable had been pulled, his mouth snapped shut. “It’s all right,” Malcolm whispered, certain he was watching himself from the ceiling so disconnected were the fingers that came up to rub the side of the Southerner’s face. “Some things don’t need words. You know too, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Dawn breaking over a peaceful ocean was never more serene or lovely than the expression that rolled over Trip Tucker’s handsome face, at least as far as one scion of a naval dynasty was concerned. “We’re in love, aren’t we?”

“I think so.” Malcolm had never been surer of anything in his life, the conviction strengthened by the velvet of warm skin and the miniscule scrape of a day’s stubble under his hand. “And as long as we’re clear, nothing else matters, does it?”

“Nothin’ at all.” Like himself, he gathered, Trip was eager to hold this sacred moment as long as possible. “Promise me you’ll not go visitin’ medieval kings on battlefields again anytime soon! Now I’ve got you I don’t wanna lose you, Malcolm Reed.”

“Maybe next time I’m overwrought and try to hide you should steal my books?”

Soft, malleable lips brushed over his own and for the briefest of moments Enterprise tipped on her axis. “Maybe next time you get all wound up you won’t need a book?” Trip suggested hopefully, his shimmer of amusement working its way through Reed’s tingling skin and all the way down into his heart. “I’ll always be here for you, Malcolm. Just say the word, okay?”

“Yes.” Whether that was the word his beloved had in mind or not Reed couldn’t be sure, but in the last instant before those tantalising lips claimed his again he decided it didn’t really matter. As long as he could have Trip Tucker’s strong arms around him he would never need a literary method of distraction again.


End file.
